180,000 refugees overwhelm the border

Mar. 3, 2011 12:00 AMAssociated Press

Libyan border crossings were overwhelmed Wednesday by tens of thousands of hungry, fearful people fleeing the nation's burgeoning conflict. Egypt and a handful of European countries launched emergency airlifts and sent ships to handle the chaotic exodus.

Melissa Fleming, a U.N. refugee agency spokeswoman, said that more than 180,000 refugees have reached the border. About 77,300 people have crossed east from Libya into Egypt, most of them Egyptians, while a similar number have fled west from Libya into Tunisia, she said. An additional 30,000 more were still waiting in Libya at the border, trying to get into Tunisia.

Thousands of angry Egyptian workers packed into a U.N. refugee camp in Ras Ajdir, Tunisia. The young men shouted and waved, climbing over each other and passing bulging suitcases overhead - all in a frenetic, desperate bid to remain in Tunisia.

Elsewhere in the sea of sloping, white U.N. plastic tents, rows of angry Bangladeshis raised their arms and jostled to be evacuated from sun-baked dirt villages cropping up in the desert that Tunisian national guard members had ringed with razor wire.

Others resigned themselves to sitting in lines in the dirt, waiting for a plastic cup of water. Some kicked a ball around outside a hangar where every wall was claimed as a campsite.